Reasons why vanilla World of Warcraft was so popular.

[underdogba]

I know a lot of people who started playing late in the original game merely because of the Southpark episode.

[isuridedes]

1) Warcraft 3 - most of the new players don't know what Warcraft 3 was or they knew, but they have never played it. Warcraft 3 was one of the greatest strategy games of all times and without doubt it was the best strategy game of its era. This game was revolutionary in every aspect, it had great graphics, gameplay, amazing music and sounds, great map editor and let's not forget the great story it had. I can say that the majority of vanilla WoW players(me included) played a lot of Warcraft 3. We all wanted to visit great places from game, explore them, do the quests and do it with your friends or even other random people. I can't even describe how if felt when I visited Ashenvale or Barrens - it was beyond amazing.

Certainly there was a sort of shared sense of knowledge from the vast number of WoW players who were avid fans of Warcraft as an RTS franchise... but this argument is rather petty and amounts to a Hipster-style comment of liking something before it became mainstream don't you think? It's like criticizing people for enjoying a remake of a classical film without having first enjoyed the original, or perhaps more apt to suggest that their enjoyment is somehow 'less'.

2) Leveling - people tend to hate on vanilla WoW leveling, but I have to disagree with them. Yes, leveling was tought, but we loved it. Mobs had high hp pools and were hiting for a lot, pulling more than two will most likely result into corpse run. You had to actually use your brain, develop a strategy and use all your class abilities effectivelly to level up quickly. Even AH was very important for quick leveling. Quests were very simple, but most of the time you felt like part of the world and you even felt like you are helping npcs - like in real RPG

Social aspect - As I mentioned, leveling was pretty hard and the best way to make it easier was to group up with other players. I like how friendly people during vanilla WoW were. You could just talk to random person and 95% of time he would respond in friendly way. I've mad countless friends in vanilla.

Judging from the changes Blizzard has made I would have to assume that your experience here is far from the majority. I remember leveling a Warlock during Vanilla and while I certainly enjoyed it leveling was DIFFICULT. Even with a pet. Not difficult 'oh that was a challenge but I feel good now that I've succeeded' but difficult in the "Why is this other class just rolling through these mobs when one of them nearly kills me'.

People forget how terribly imbalanced classes were during Vanilla. The level of ease various classes and specs had throughout the leveling process was greatly varied. People also seem to think that back in Vanilla players were just happy rainbows of joy waiting on their tiptoes to help the wayward citizen of Azeroth through difficult times.

Sure that happens; but you know what else happens? People telling you to look it up on ThottBot (Because back then TB was where it was all at). People calling you ignorant for not knowing simple commands. People giving you completely inaccurate information just for laughs. Sound familiar? It should... people more or less do the same thing today.

4) No addons - yep, there were almost no addons and it was great. You don't know where the quest mobs are? Ask friends, guild or even general chat. Try to do this in WotLK or Cata, you would get typical "google it, use wowhead" answer. Addons are taking the fun factor out of the game. Why are people using addon to help them with rotation or addons like DBM? That's just silly.

Yeah I don't remember using CT_RA at all duri..... wait a minute! Seriously during Vanilla we had some of the most OP addons ever. CT_RAs healing monitor cherry-picked the lowest health player in the raid and put them at the top of your list so you literally just clicked the top bar and laughed your way to victory.

My favorite old addon was AutoTravel. You could setup waypoints across the world map and set your toon to walk from one point to another. I had points setup to allow me to travel from Booty Bay all the way to EPL without running into a mob. Meanwhile I could go make myself a snack.

5) RPG aspect - Why am I mentioning this? Back in a day... No, seriously. Back in a day you had to carefully choose your class and stick with it. There were no alts, only some people who played a lot could afford this luxury. Your character was part of you, you were part of your character. It was great, because this game is RPG after all and not just some Dota or LoL game.

There have always been alts. Just because you didn't experience it doesn't make it not true. There was also the inconvenience of being locked into one spec at a time which resulted in significant delays if for whatever reason someone needed to change.

[Evilomen]

One of the biggest reasons why Vanilla was so popular was because it was much easier to meet people on a regular basis on your own server.

There was no group, raid finder or cross server battlegrounds. You felt much more of a community. Now its people sticking to their own guilds or soloing. The whole point of a mmo is to interact with other people especially I feel, within your own server. This new version of warcraft makes it much less easier to have that feeling of a community. You concentrated on mainly one class that you would spend time on since it would take longer to get rep and such - as a result of being tougher and having to spend more time on something. It made it feel like an achievement, before achievements were created because those achievements you get now are not achievements at all, they are merely a checklist.

You actually had to make the journey across the lands to gain entry into a dungeon. Sometimes you collided with the opposite faction and this created something you do not see anymore at all. World PVP in a normal questing zone. Now you see people from other servers while questing?!!!

I see that people have mentioned addons. Yes there were addons but you could play the game without having to rely on them. These days it seems you have to have them. If you needed help on a quest you could stop and ask people around you instead of the game doing it for you.

I would say that all of the people who have stated that it was just because the game is new missed out on that real MMO side to wow. The part where your main char was around more, because you spent alot of time on it and created friendships as a result.

This new wow, isn't socially friendly at all, in fact it is quite the opposite. People using bots in BG's pretty much sums it up for you - You aren't actually doing anything in the game yourself, its all assisted.

So OP I agree on your points and what you were trying to get at. "There aint no school like the old school "

Infracted: Thread Necro from May, 2012 - ML

[Mandible]

Wow was popular to begin with because Warcraft was popular. It spread due to the advertising blizzard used, and most likely also to some extend word of mouth. But the adds with different known people and "I play x class" most likely had the biggest impact.

After that you could probably also add the rising popularity of the mmo genre (or might be wrong and its just my pov).

[Xeraxis]

WoW was so popular starting out because they took the then rising MMO genre and simplified it so that even casual players could experience the majority of the game.

[Reakash]

Wow was popular to begin with because Warcraft was popular. It spread due to the advertising blizzard used, and most likely also to some extend word of mouth. But the adds with different known people and "I play x class" most likely had the biggest impact.

After that you could probably also add the rising popularity of the mmo genre (or might be wrong and its just my pov).

Dont forget, a lot of people were also fed up with EQ and Sony's bullshit, and many vanilla WoW players came from games like EQ, AC, Ultima, DAOC, etc.

[MoanaLisa]

Thread necro from seven months ago. I'm quite sure we've been around the block on this subject several times since.

Closing.